Melted Plastic and make-shift face plates.
I recently saw a new video of retrobrite methods by "The 8-Bit Guy", in which he suggested using heat with the peroxide. Essentially hot water mixed with peroxide, but to keep the temperature below 200 F as that will melt ABS plastic.
I did that with the 5 1/4 floppy drive face plate from my Pack-Mate III, unfortunately, the temperature got too high and it melted a little, not a lot, but enough to bend it and make it not fit back onto the drive.
It did work though, a lot whiter than it was before, and ignore the white acrylic paint, I just put some on to see if it'd work - after it was already melted, just as a test since the face plate is useless now anyways.
I did make a make-shift face plate, just to cover the hole in my front panel now, as well as to stop dust from getting inside the drive and the system itself.
I did this in a simple process:
1. Trace the outline of a 5 1/4 face plate on an old box of kleenex
2. Cut it out
3. Punch in holes for the tabs arm and for the light.
3. Cut an opening slot for the disks to go in and out of.
4.Put some electrical tape around the opening in order to make it smooth for the disks.
3. Paint it white
Turns out rather well, obviously I will want to get a new one soon, but this is good as a temporary thing considering my current situation.
I did find this Windows 95 era computer for sale on my local classifieds site, this time within my city, and near a few stores I go to often!
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-compute ... 1291266109
It has a 5 1/4 inch drive and the face plate looks identical to the one that was just accidentally melted, so I am going to try to just take it's face plate off, and put it on the pack-mate 3's drive, if that doesn't work, I will just swap drives, as I feel the pack-mate III is more deserving considering it's '89/90 vintage of a real floppy face plate than a Windows 95 era machine is.
Oh, and I offered the guy $50 for it, still awaiting a response, this time since it's near stores I frequent in my city, I will pick it up in person, so no shipping costs!
I did that with the 5 1/4 floppy drive face plate from my Pack-Mate III, unfortunately, the temperature got too high and it melted a little, not a lot, but enough to bend it and make it not fit back onto the drive.
It did work though, a lot whiter than it was before, and ignore the white acrylic paint, I just put some on to see if it'd work - after it was already melted, just as a test since the face plate is useless now anyways.
I did make a make-shift face plate, just to cover the hole in my front panel now, as well as to stop dust from getting inside the drive and the system itself.
I did this in a simple process:
1. Trace the outline of a 5 1/4 face plate on an old box of kleenex
2. Cut it out
3. Punch in holes for the tabs arm and for the light.
3. Cut an opening slot for the disks to go in and out of.
4.Put some electrical tape around the opening in order to make it smooth for the disks.
3. Paint it white
Turns out rather well, obviously I will want to get a new one soon, but this is good as a temporary thing considering my current situation.
I did find this Windows 95 era computer for sale on my local classifieds site, this time within my city, and near a few stores I go to often!
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-compute ... 1291266109
It has a 5 1/4 inch drive and the face plate looks identical to the one that was just accidentally melted, so I am going to try to just take it's face plate off, and put it on the pack-mate 3's drive, if that doesn't work, I will just swap drives, as I feel the pack-mate III is more deserving considering it's '89/90 vintage of a real floppy face plate than a Windows 95 era machine is.
Oh, and I offered the guy $50 for it, still awaiting a response, this time since it's near stores I frequent in my city, I will pick it up in person, so no shipping costs!
Comments
Hey guys just destroyed yet another computer part, instead of fixing it or replacing the individual part that I broke I went ahead and bought another computer!
A while back I accidentally botched up what was otherwise a nice 5x86 motherboard trying to de-solder a soldered in integrated clock chip. Its not as easy as it looks on modern-ish heat-distributing PCBs.
I remember some of my early attempts to produce a mirror on a plastic base.
First time I used a mercury-silver amalgam on a nitrocellulose plastic base. Like you, I did not get the heating right and ended up prematurely decomposing the plastic(which decomposes below mercury boiling point). Mercury vapors + nitrates + heat, not good.
Second time I used silver nitrate method(safer), still didn't learn from my mistake because not only did I get mixture wrong, I didn't take care to properly coat the plastic(used acetate, not flammable) and ended up warping it.
Oh well, some things you need to learn from experience. Next time, be sure to have a thermometer on hand.
When I deal with things that can be affected by heat, such as ABS thermoplastic, I keep the temp significantly below critical points. E.g. melting point.
Just because you haven't reached the point where you *think* things will go south, doesn't mean coming close won't cause it either.
Also, keep in mind ABS(what is used in these cases) starts going wonky at around 80celsius(~180fahrenheit, quite lower than 200 degrees f) so I would say that is the temperature threshold.
Actually,
All the drives I could find were at least $30 US, and then I'd need them shipped, and the shipping was almost or over $30 US as well, so actually, just going and picking up this local machine is cheaper.